Evaluation of new indoor sonic boom subjective test facility at NASA Langley Research Center.

A sonic boom simulator at NASA Langley Research Center has been constructed for research on human response to low-amplitude sonic booms heard indoors. Research in this facility will ultimately lead to a psychoacoustic model for single indoor booms that will be validated by future community studies. The first subjective test was designed to explore indoor human response to variations in sonic boom rise time and amplitude. Another goal was to identify variability across listener locations within the facility. Finally, the test also served to evaluate the facility as a laboratory research tool for studying indoor human response to sonic booms. Subjects listened to test sounds and were asked to judge the annoyance relative to a reference boom. Measurements of test signals were conducted for objective analysis and correlation with subjective responses. Results confirm the functionality of the facility and effectiveness of the test methods and indicate that calculated loudness does not fully describe the indoor annoyance.